Close Quarters

FIVE

Lindsay Citera was nervous. After being pulled out of a training session on firearms and tactics and told to report to an office on the second floor, she was wondering what she could have done wrong. She’d felt the eyes of her course colleagues following her out of the room and knew what was going through their minds: that she had somehow screwed up and was being dropped … or she’d struck lucky and was being given an early assignment.

Sympathy and envy; they went hand-in-hand where competition for success was intense and positions were eagerly sought. And nobody wanted to be a trainee for ever.

She hoped it was an assignment. She’d been pulling high marks in pretty much every module on the training program so there was little chance that she’d messed up unless it was something she hadn’t been prepared for. Like her age. Or her family.

At thirty-four she was older than most of her intake colleagues. She had a law degree but no previous law enforcement or military experience, and had wondered if the lack of experience would count against her, especially after being comprehensively whipped on the brutal physical exercises by people ten years her junior. She hadn’t actually come in last, though; that honour had gone to a guy who’d tried to take a stockade-style fence in one go and missed. But neither had she broken any finishing tapes on the endurance runs.

Her biggest concern was her family background. She’d answered all the questions about family honestly, aware that applying to join the CIA would open them all to an intensive round of vetting. She doubted her parents separating would count against her, but having a brother, Tommy, currently in a military garrison accused of bringing in drugs from a tour in Afghanistan might limit her scope for advancement, as could a younger sister, Karen, deeply in debt and running with a crowd of delinquents that had already seen her pick up some DUI misdemeanours and a couple of warnings.

While waiting in what looked like an unused second-floor office, she’d checked herself over for presentation. Smart but not too stand-out, clean and tidy with no obvious marks from the pistol range, although a faint smell of burned powder residue hung around her shoulders; hair short and neat, nails just the right side of acceptably long. Make-up light.

The door opened and she jumped to her feet. A tall, slim man entered and sat down across from her. He was carrying a plain folder. When he flipped back the cover, she saw her name printed on the inside flap.

‘Brian Callahan,’ he said by way of introduction, and motioned for her to sit. ‘Lindsay Citera. Soft “C”, right?’

‘Yes, sir. Like the guy from Chicago. The rock group, not the musical.’ She clamped her mouth shut and felt herself colour up. Jesus, where did that come from? Hell of a way to start an interview.

Callahan gave a ghost of a smile. ‘I know who you mean. It says here that you’re single, with no current attachments or dependants, that you live alone. Is that still correct?’

‘That’s correct, sir.’

‘Good.’ He sat back. ‘I could go through your file and tell you what you already know — that you’re top of your grades on all fronts where it matters. But that would be wasting both our time and we don’t have a lot to spare. I’m a staff operations officer; you know what that means?’

‘Yes, sir, I do.’ She felt a buzz of real excitement and remembered to close her mouth. He hadn’t mentioned family background, which was surely good, wasn’t it? Callahan’s tone was urgent, and she wondered if that was how it always was around here. SOOs, as they were known, were the main links with intelligence gathering and operations personnel. They were the mostly unseen officers who refined and translated proposals and planning into action, and guided the people at the sharp end: the men and women in the field. The spies, although nobody referred to them that way. Spies worked for the other side.

‘Good. Saves me having to explain. I need a comms support officer, Lindsay, who won’t mind ducking out of the light for a while. I don’t know how long, but it shouldn’t be more than a week, ten days. You interested?’

‘Absolutely, sir. When do I start?’

‘You already have. You’ve been signed off all ongoing training schedules until further notice, but any summary I write of your work will count towards your overall training program assessment. You OK with that?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘No animals to worry about? No family members or significant others on the horizon to distract you?’ He looked at her without blinking and she wondered if he was waiting for her to mention Tommy or Karen. They were distractions sure enough, she being the big sister, but only when it suited them. She hadn’t spoken to Tommy in a couple of months and Karen only called when she was in need of money and desperate enough to play the emotional blackmail card. Well, she’d have to suck it up and do without for a while. Big sister was dropping off the radar.

She opened her mouth to reply, but found her throat had gone dry. My God, she wondered, does he mean I’m going undercover? ‘Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir. I’m fine with that. No animals, no family or anything to worry about.’ Certainly no boyfriend, she thought; not since she’d joined the program. There had been a few cautious approaches from colleagues, and a couple of the more obvious chat-up lines from guys in the administration area. But she’d steered clear of all of them. It was no secret that romantic entanglements, while not forbidden, could prove a serious hindrance on the trainee program. Not that she’d sworn herself into holy orders or anything like that; but she wanted to succeed in the job she’d always wanted to do since she was in high school and wasn’t going to stuff it up for a quick roll in the hay.

‘Good. You’ll stay in the operations centre for as long as it takes. I’ll arrange for meals to be brought to you from the cafeteria, and if you need a break we can assign one of the other trainees on assignment down here to take over. But keep it short. If we have to, we can stand you down for a few hours but you should regard this as a twenty-four-seven assignment until further notice.’

‘Doing what, sir?’

He nodded at the folder. ‘It’s all in there. Read it now and leave it here when you go. The short version is you’ve been assigned to support an operative in the field in Eastern Europe. He’s not one of ours but he is to be given the same degree of focus and attention that you would give a full-time serving CIA officer. Understood?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Callahan leaned forward. ‘I know this is stuff you’ll have been told but hear me out — it’s important. Over the course of the next few days, you will learn things that never leave this facility. The operative’s code name is Watchman. He’s highly experienced and you could go many hours, even whole days when you don’t hear from him. But when you do, you go into overdrive and give him every second of your attention because he will need it. Doesn’t matter what time of day or night it is; to Watchman, just like any other clandestine officer, you’re there to make sure he has whatever backup he asks for. That could be anything from map coordinates to travel schedules, down to the route to the nearest hospital or the name of a friendly doctor. Get me?’

‘Yes, sir.’ She reached across and picked up the folder. It felt as if she was making a momentous move, like she’d just taken a major step forward in her career.

Callahan’s face softened as if he understood. ‘I don’t mean it to sound harder than it is, and I’ll be here to guide you. But it’s vitally important you understand how critical your role is to Watchman. This is going to require all of your focus, understood?’

‘Understood, sir. Am I allowed to ask why he’s from outside?’

‘You might have heard talk about the differences between Langley personnel and outsiders — what are often called private contractors. Don’t listen to it. This man’s job is to keep another person alive in the field, and to get him out in one piece. It’s what he’s good at and is why he was selected. The fact that he’s not CIA is not an issue to me; it’s what he can do that matters. That makes him vitally important to us and the country. It makes you an important part of it, too. I know it’s a huge thing we’re asking of you this early in your career, but I wouldn’t be speaking to you now if I hadn’t been assured that you were more than capable of doing this.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ Lindsay’s throat was dry with nerves. ‘Will I be talking to this other person?’

‘No. He has a limited line of reporting. If he runs into trouble, it’s up to Watchman to get him out. Watchman is your focus.’

‘I understand. I won’t let you down.’

Callahan smiled, for the first time without apparent reservation. ‘I know that, Lindsay. Just make sure Watchman knows it, too. Yours could be the only friendly voice he hears over the next few days, remember that.’

As soon as Callahan had gone, Lindsay opened the folder and read the briefing notes three times, a habit ingrained into her by her dad, a pharmacist. Read three times, he’d always told her, and you’ll know it forever. It had worked pretty well so far and got her through law school, so she wasn’t complaining.

Ukraine. It had been all over the news for a long time now, yet she knew ridiculously little about it. Maybe now was the time to update her education.

As part of her training she had already sat in on selected ‘live’ operations, listening to real-time and recorded audio feed from officers in the field and watching visuals via drones over Afghanistan, Iraq and other hot zones. Sitting in a darkened bubble with a bunch of other trainees, however, had made some of it seem a little unreal, and she and others had suspected they were simulations to help weed out the romantics, fantasists and the uncommitted.

But this was different; this was about a man she was shortly going to be joined to more closely than to most of her friends. She could put down the phone on them, and they her, and they’d still be friends in the morning, hangovers and fights notwithstanding. But not the man code-named Watchman. And that made everything seem frighteningly real.

His very life might depend on everything she heard, did or said.